SILICON LOUNGE/Donna Ladd

Getting Burned

Free-speech signals crossed over slavery ad flap

It's the perfect angry white guy's scheme. A publicity hog
concocts a plan to run a tasteless, simpleminded ad
(www.frontpagemag.com) in college newspapers around the country,
listing 10 contestable arguments against slavery reparations. He then
whines about being a victim of political correctness when students on
those campuses protest the contents of the racist ad.

There: I said the R-word. I took the bait, and dared call this ad,
the whole sordid project, "racist." Scold me. Censure me. Launch
SlapDonna.com. If there's anybody being silenced here, it's those of
us willing to call, er, a spade a spade. Or a racist ad a racist ad.
From reason No. 10: "America's African-American citizens are the
richest and most privileged black people alive -&endash; a bounty
that is a direct result of the heritage that is under assault." Yeah,
whatever.

With all due respect to the PC cops among us, I do believe that is
a racist statement. Although legitimate questions lurk somewhere in
this ad, Horowitz couches them in typical white naivete. And he
assumes that he or I or some other non-black writer should
paternalistically tell black people to get over it and stop
protesting &endash;- after centuries of economic and social
repression, after a 2000 election slap at their voting rights, after
Reagan's pet drug war has filled our prisons with black so-called
felons who will never vote again. Sorry, Dude, it's not up to you and
other conservative whiners to decide what people find racist, and
what they don't.

Horowitz is entitled to keep trying, though. It's also perfectly
fine for him to throw together a racy ad to try to sell to college
newspapers in order to pump up his book sales. That's called
investing in your bottom line, and the US Constitution damned sure
allows that. But &endash;- and here's where the anti-PC crowd starts
burning this blue-eyed blonde in effigy -&endash; it's also OK for
campus newspapers to refuse to publish those ads. Right now, I'm
enjoying a delightful image of, say, Louis Farrakhan outraged because
Bob Jones University won't run "10 Reasons Christian White Guys Suck
Eggs." Of course, Bob Jones doesn't have to run such an incendiary
ad. And if it did, who would we be to condemn its Christian white
students for protesting the ad?

On his Web site, Horowitz is keeping what he calls a "censorship
scorecard" of how many schools have taken his bait: so far, 14 have,
35 censorious, hateful schools haven't. A rudimentary lesson in the
First Amendment: It prohibits censorship by the government, pure and
simple. Horowitz knows that (I hope): I haven't heard him point out
that the private universities on his hit list aren't even bound by
the First Amendment. And even the public ones are not required by the
First Amendment to run a faulty ad designed only to pick a fight so
he can, in turn, act picked-on. Read my lips: Newspapers reject ads
all the time, and often for much less clear-cut reasons than in this
ad (which relies on the white man's revisionist history of Africa,
and the erroneous view that the US welfare system has largely been
repayments to blacks, for starters.)

This debate hasn't even reached free-speech first base. It's as if
few in the media understand that speech in response to speech is just
as protected as the first round that was fired. I remember a similar
argument espoused last year by ABC reporter and pseudo-libertarian
John Stossel. He complained on his "You Can't Say That!" special that
Brown University students tried to shout him down when he was on
campus to shoot an ABC segment about a student accused of rape. He
complained that his free speech was violated because angry female
students protested the segment, shouting: "This is not TV hype. Rape
is not TV hype!" Bad, bad girls. Stossel's on-camera retort: "Where
do students learn that censorship's the answer? Well, today, their
schools often teach that by example."

No. That wasn't censorship. You, me, Horowitz, Stossel, Brown
students, whomever, have the right to talk back, even to try to shout
down someone with a bigger megaphone and deeper pockets (or not).
Whether we're right or wrong, we can line up to protest speakers we
think are spreading dangerous messages. That kind of give and take,
though it can get heated, sounds like democracy to me.

Many conservatives, however, have a different tactic. Racism
&endash; and the maintenance of the power structure -- always depends
on trying to close minds, and dividing thus conquering. So whenever
someone speaks up about injustice -- whether based on race, gender,
disability, you name it &endash;- we get labeled "politically
correct" and tossed into the extremist crowd that insists on spelling
my gender "womyn." And for some reason, we good progressives go along
with the half-cocked scheme, self-censoring ourselves and apologizing
for our PC rudeness &endash; when we need to be raising hell about
the return of blatant bigotry to public discourse.

Take John Ashcroft. During his confirmation mess, I was intrigued
to read that the senator's campaign got away with a PC
sleight-of-hand during his campaign last year against the late Gov.
Mel Carnahan. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a
CNN transcript in which Council of Conservative Citizens
(www.cofcc.org) head Gordon Baum said he would support Ashcroft for
president if he ran. The DSCC release called Ashcroft the "white
supremacist's presidential choice." Well, yea-ah.

Unacceptable! screamed Ashcroft's campaign. The St. Louis
Post-Dispatch moaned that the DSCC "is playing in the gutter with
its smear. ... Gov. Mel Carnahan should tell his party to cut it
out." Cut what out? Exposing racist ties? Somehow, though, while the
media should have been examining the meaning of the CofCC's support
of Ashcroft &endash;- quick, go link to their Web site; not racist,
right? -- the Democrats get slapped for daring to even imply the
R-word.

We are letting white conservatives drive the debate &endash;
race-related and otherwise -- in this country. The meaning of
"politically correct" has done a major rightward shift, if you hadn't
noticed. Conservatives and bigots across the US are purposefully
launching thinly disguised racist and sexist diatribes and then
getting all steamed when someone dares to talk back.

Funny thing is, I support Horowitz's right to be racist (assuming
he actually is; I suspect "opportunist" is the correct word) and run
incendiary ads and sell his Hating Whitey books however he
can. I believe publications should debate both the pros and cons of
slavery reparations in their editorial spaces &endash; it's not an
open-and-shut issue &endash;- or choose to run Horowitz' silly ad if
they want to. I also denounce the students who actually steal and
burn newspapers; I believe they've crossed a fascist line and
probably deserve Horowitz's "racial McCarthyism" charge. (Hodding
Carter Jr.'s response to his effigy-burning by White Citizens Council
members in the 1960s brings some perspective: Being that
Mississippians used to burn real people, perhaps burning an effigy
signified real progress, he editorialized. And such dissent paid off
for Carter as well: He got his best-paid speaking gig -- $1,000! --
at a Northeastern university afterward: "I ought to get burned
again," he said later.)

Horowitz doesn't hide his search for celebrity. On his site, he
writes, "My Andy Warhol moment has come. ... Britney Spears move
over. There's a new celebrity in town." I implore you, though, not to
let an opportunist drive an important debate. It's time for a
backlash against the PC backlash: We must stop letting the racists
define racism.